William Patton Mauldin was born July 20, 1843 in Pickens District (now Oconee County), South Carolina to Tyre Balaam Mauldin and Elizabeth Featherstone Gaines Mauldin. W. P. Mauldin and his brother, James Andrew Mauldin, came to Mississippi shortly following the Civil War. In his Life Sketch, which he wrote in November 1927, he states the following, “After reaching home found the country so badly torn up by Yankee raids, felt just like coming west, as had always thought would some day come west. So an opportunity offered my brother and myself to come to Mississippi, so the 9th day of November, 1865, left South Carolina for Mississippi. We came through the country in a mule wagon and was 21 days on the road. Landed in Winston County December 1. Stayed there one year and then went to Carroll [County], hunting a still better part of Mississippi. Lived there 6 years…and came to Wayne County in the year 1878. Have been here ever since except 3 years lived in Clarke County. My wife’s name was Miss L. E. Taylor. We married January 16, 1868 in Carroll County, Mississippi. She died March 13th, 1922. We lived happily together for 54 years and raised eleven children, all to be grown. Three of them have died since.”

W. P. Mauldin served in Company F, Orr’s First South Carolina Rifles in the Virginia Campaign from April 1862 to April 3, 1865 when he was captured near Petersburg and Richmond and sent to a prison camp on Hart Island, New York. He was released and returned home on August 20, 1865. He was wounded three times: Battle of Gaines’ Mill on June 27, 1862, a severe wound in the thigh; Chancellorsville on May 2 or 3, 1863, a minie ball in the calf of his leg; and at Spotsylvania Court House on May 12, 1864, a minie ball in his right arm. In his Life Sketch he wrote, “I feel that there was a special Providence that took care of me through all that conflict. There were comrades killed on my right and left in some of those battles.”

After moving to Wayne County, he farmed, raised a family and lived for the remainder of his life. He died on August 25, 1928 and is buried with his wife, Louisiana "Lou" Elizabeth Taylor Mauldin, in Fedora Cemetery in Wayne County, Mississippi.